Occurring in 1775 at the height of the European Enlightenment, the Lisbon earthquake was the great natural disaster of the century, killing thousands and destroying over 80 percent of the city’s buildings. It also left its mark on the history of ideas, as Henrik Bering writes in his review of Mark Molesky’s This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason:
In an apocalyptic sermon published the year [after the earthquake], Father Gabriel Malagrida, a prominent [Portuguese] Jesuit, interpreted the earthquake as God’s punishment for the sins of the Lisboans. . . . [T]heologians like Britain’s John Wesley went on the offensive and seized on the earthquake as evidence of divine intervention. Abroad, Lisbon did indeed have a reputation as Sin City, King José setting a bad example with his predilection for taking nuns as mistresses. . . .
Up until then, writes Molesky, the feeling among the leading figures of the Enlightenment had been one of “smug self-satisfaction.” [Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz had spoken of a benevolent deity who had created “the best of all possible worlds,” an attitude reflected in the conclusion of [Alexander] Pope’s Essay on Man: “whatever is, is right.” That optimism was badly shaken. Voltaire, who was living in comfortable semi-retirement in Switzerland with his chubby niece Madame Denis and Luc, his pet monkey, went into a deep funk: “Leibniz does not tell me . . . why the innocent and the guilty suffer alike this inevitable evil.” He wrote “Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne,” a bitter denunciation of an evil world with a tepid acknowledgment of God’s existence stuck on at the end.
The young [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau would have none of this and wrote Voltaire a long letter accusing him of inconsistency. Rousseau got around the problem by dividing evil into natural and moral categories, says Molesky, which enabled him to attack his fellow men while retaining his faith. Thus he tears into the Lisboans for having built such tall buildings and crammed so many people into them, and for hanging around trying to save their belongings rather than fleeing. Besides, he adds high-handedly, by dying at this point, “some no doubt escaped greater misfortunes.”
Read more on New Criterion: http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Lisbon-s-narrow-fate-8328